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Princess Annieznlouise 













6S> 


BY 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


VITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ORSON LOVELL.*' f 


WFTW'VDDK’' doublgday ond 

1NLW IUKlV NFCLURE COMPAI1Y 








TWO COPIES 


pECElVEa 



library of Congre**i 

Office of the 

N0V231PP9 


Register of Copyrights; 


\ 


47632 

Copyright , /<?95, Z#?#, Z#?? 

By Rudyard Kipling 


SECOND COPY, 


Press of J. J. Little & Co., Astor Place, New York. 


Typography by University Press, 

John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 

H la 0 

JV'ov 




/ 


36 $ 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 











Illustrations 



The List of 


Front lining pages, “ The Brush- 1 
wood Boy ” 

Princess Annie^wlouise .... 

Title-page. 

Headpiece, (t Girls and boys, come 


Frontispiece 


out to play ”.i 

| page 

i 

George, Giant-Killer. 

facing page 

2 

Decoration ( asterisks ). 

page 

5 

“ Sat miserably upon gigantic door¬ 
steps trying to sing the multipli¬ 
cation-table up to four times six” 

>> 

6 

“ He waded out with a twelve-inch 
flower-pot on each foot ” . 

facing page 

8 

Decoration ( 'asterisks ). 

page 

11 

“ Oxford-on-a-visit ” . 

facing page 

12 

“ ( Let me look — pleathe’” 

page 


“ Georgie was used to eat all round 
the clock ” . 

facing page 

16 

Princess Annie<z»louise .... 


20 

Decoration (asterisks) . 

page 

23 

i( Cottar, major ”. 

facing page 

26 

Young Davies. 

if if 

36 

“ Slipped over a low mud wall to the 
practice-ground”. 

page 

41 

Decoration (asterisks) . 

tf 

43 

Decoration. 

pages 44-49 











LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Key to the Gate of the City of Sleep 

page 53 

“ Back from the City of Sleep ” 

facing page 54 

Map, with decoration. 

>> >» 58 

Decoration ( asterisks ). 

page 65 

“ . . . Somewhere in the Mediter- 


ranean”. 

facing page 66 

" ‘ Do you know,’ she said ” 

„ „ 70 

“ ‘ Rolls a bit, does n’t she ? ’ ” . 

»> » 74 

“ The hand that imitated so deli¬ 


cately the flicker and wimple of 


an egg-dropping fly ” . 

page 89 

Decorations. 

pages 92, 93 

The Girl. 

facing page 94 

“ ‘If it’s a fish or a trunk I can’t,’ 


Georgie laughed ”. 

,, ,, 102 

“ Down the two-mile slope they 


raced together ”. 

,, ,, 106 

“ ‘ Good-bye, Boy ’ ” 


Tailpiece, 4 ‘The End” .... 

page 119 

Back lining pages, “Rudyard Kip- 

] in nr ’ ' 



ling” 







t 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 







CBRUSHWO 013 
CBOY? 


iris and boys, come out to play : 
he moon is shining as bright as day ! 

HJ eave y° ur supper and leave your sleep, 

nd come with your playfellows out in the street! 
jp the ladder and down the wall — 


f k CHILD of three sat up in 
his crib and screamed at 
H I the top of his voice, his 
J fists clinched and his eyes 
full of terror. At first no one 
heard, for his nursery was in the 
west wing, and the nurse was talking to 


i 




2 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


a gardener among the laurels. Then the 
housekeeper passed that way, and hurried 
to soothe him. He was her pet, and she 
disapproved of the nurse. 

“ What was it, then ? What was it, 
then ? There’s nothing to frighten him, 
Georgie dear.” 

“It was — it was a policeman! He 
was on the Down — I saw him! He 
came in. Jane said he would.” 

“ Policemen don't come into houses, 
dearie. Turn over, and take my hand.” 

“ I saw him — on the Down. He came 
here. Where is your hand, Harper ? ” 

The housekeeper waited till the sobs 
changed to the regular breathing of sleep 
before she stole out. 

“Jane, what nonsense have you been 
telling Master Georgie about policemen? ” 

“ I have n't told him anything.” 

“You have. He's been dreaming 
about them.” 

“We met Tisdall on Dowhead when 



George, Giant Killer 

















THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 5 

we were in the donkey-cart this morn¬ 
ing. P’raps that’s what put it into his 
head.” 

“Oh! Now you aren’t going to 
frighten the child into fits with your silly 
tales, and the master know nothing about 
it. If ever I catch you again,” etc. 



A child of six was telling himself stories 
as he lay in bed. It was a new power, 
and he kept it a secret. A month before 
it had occurred to him to carry on a nurs¬ 
ery tale left unfinished by his mother, 
and he was delighted to find the tale as 
it came out of his own head just as sur¬ 
prising as though he were listening to it 
“ all new from the beginning.” There 
was a prince in that tale, and he killed 
dragons, but only for one night. Ever 



6 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 



“ Sat miserably upon gigantic doorsteps trying to sing the 
multiplication-table up to four times six." 


afterwards Georgie dubbed himself prince, 
pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you 











THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


7 


see, he could not tell any one, for fear of 
being laughed at), and his tales faded 
gradually into dreamland, where adven¬ 
tures were so many that he could not 
recall the half of them. They all began 
in the same way, or, as Georgie explained 
to the shadows of the night-light, there 
was “ the same starting-off place ” — a 
pile of brushwood stacked somewhere 
near a beach; and round this pile Georgie 
found himself running races with little 
boys and girls. These ended, ships ran 
high up the dry land and opened into 
cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron 
railings that surrounded beautiful gardens 
turned all soft and could be walked through 
and overthrown so long as he remem¬ 
bered it was only a dream. He could 
never hold that knowledge more than a 
few seconds ere things became real, and 
instead of pushing down houses full of 
grown-up people (a just revenge) he sat 
miserably upon gigantic doorsteps trying 


8 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


to sing the multiplication-table up to four 
times six. 

The princess of his tales was a person 
of wonderful beauty (she came from the 
old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out 
of print), and as she always applauded 
Georgie’s valor among the dragons and 
buffaloes, he gave^ her the two finest 
names he had ever heard in his life — 
Annie and Louise, pronounced Annie- 
< 27 douise.” When the dreams swamped 
the stories, she would change into one 
of the little girls round the brushwood- 
pile, still keeping her title and crown. 
She saw Georgie drown once in a dream- 
sea by the beach (it was the day after 
he had been taken to bathe in a real sea 
by his nurse); and he said as he sank : 
cc Poor Annie^louise ! She 'll be sorry 
for me now ! ” But “ Annie^louise,” 
walking slowly on the beach, called, 
ac Ha! ha!' said the duck, laughing," 
which to a waking mind might not seem to 



“ He waded out with a twelve-inch Jlower-pot on each foot 



































































* 


















































































































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY n 


bear on the situation. It consoled Georgie 
at once, and must have been some kind 
of spell, for it raised the bottom of the 
deep, and he waded out with a twelve-inch 
flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly 
forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in 
real life, he felt triumphantly wicked. 



The movements of the grown-ups, 
whom Georgie tolerated, but did not pre¬ 
tend to understand, removed his world, 
when he was seven years old, to a place 
called “ Oxford-on-a-visit.” Here were 
huge buildings surrounded by vast prairies, 
with streets of infinite length, and, above 
all, something called the “ buttery/’ which 









12 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


Georgie was dying to see, because he 
knew it must be greasy, and therefore 
delightful. He perceived how correct 
were his judgments when his nurse led 
him through a stone arch into the pres¬ 
ence of an enormously fat man, who 
asked him if he would like some bread 
and cheese. Georgie was used to eat all 
round the clock, so he took what “ but¬ 
tery ” gave him, and would have taken 
some brown liquid called “ auditale ” but 
that his nurse led him away to an after¬ 
noon performance of a thing called “ Pep¬ 
per’s Ghost.” This was intensely thrilling. 
People’s heads came off and flew all over 
the stage, and skeletons danced bone by 
bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond 
question a man of the worst, waved his 
arms and flapped a long gown, and in a 
deep bass voice (Georgie had never heard 
a man sing before) told of his sorrows 
unspeakable. Some grown-up or other 
tried to explain that the illusion 


was 



“ Oxford-on-a-visit" 
















































































































































































, . 







THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


15 


made with mirrors, and that there was 
no need to be frightened. Georgie did 
not know what illusions were, but he did 



“ ‘ Let me look—pleathe ’ ” 


know that a mirror was the looking-glass 
with the ivory handle on his mother's 
dressing-table. Therefore the “ grown-up ” 
was <c just saying things ” after the dis- 


16 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


tressing custom of “ grown-ups/' and 
Georgie cast about for amusement be¬ 
tween scenes. Next to him sat a little 
girl dressed all in black, her hair combed 
off her forehead exactly like the girl in 
the book called “Alice in Wonderland/' 
which had been given him on his last 
birthday. The little girl looked at Georgie, 
and Georgie looked at her. There seemed 
to be no need of any further introduction. 

“ I've got a cut on my thumb," said 
he. It was the first work of his first real 
knife, a savage triangular hack, and he 
esteemed it a most valuable possession. 

“ I'm tho thorry ! " she lisped. “ Let 
me look — pleathe." 

“ There's a di-ack-lum plaster on, but 
it's all raw under," Georgie answered, 
complying. 

“ Dothent it hurt ? " — her gray eyes 
were full of pity and interest. 

“ Awf'ly. Perhaps it will give me 
lockjaw." 



t( Georgie ^was used to eat all round the clock ” 





































































































































































































































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 19 

“ It lookth very horrid. I *m tho 
thorry! ” She put a forefinger to his 
hand, and held her head sidewise for a 
better view. 

Here the nurse turned, and shook him 
severely. “ You must n't talk to strange 
little girls, Master Georgie.’' 

“ She is n't strange. She's very nice. 
I like her, an* I 've showed her my new 
cut.” 

“ The idea ! You change places with 
me.” 

She moved him over, and shut out 
the little girl from his view, while the 
grown-up behind renewed the futile 
explanations. 

“ I am not afraid, truly,” said the boy, 
wriggling in despair; “ but why don't 
you go to sleep in the afternoons, same 
as Provost of Oriel ? ” 

Georgie had been introduced to a 
grown-up of that name, who slept in 
his presence without apology. Georgie 


20 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


understood that he was the most impor¬ 
tant grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove 
to gild his rebuke with flatteries. This 
grown-up did not seem to like it, but he 
collapsed, and Georgie lay back in his 
seat, silent and enraptured. Mr. Pepper 
was singing again, and the deep, ringing 
voice, the red fire, and the misty, waving 
gown all seemed to be mixed up with the 
little girl who had been so kind about his 
cut. When the performance was ended 
she nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded 
in return. He spoke no more than was 
necessary till bedtime, but meditated on 
new colors and sounds and lights and 
music and things as far as he understood 
them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. 
Pepper mingling with the little girl’s lisp. 
That night he made a new tale, from which 
he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel- 
Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold 
crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a 
new Annie^louise in her place. So it 



Princess Annieanlouise (Grimm Edition) 

























































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 23 

was perfectly right and natural that when 
he came to the brushwood-pile he should 
find her waiting for him, her hair combed 
off her forehead more like Alice in Won¬ 
derland than ever, and the races and 
adventures began. 



Ten years at an English public school 
do not encourage dreaming. Georgie 
won his growth and chest measurement, 
and a few other things which did not 
appear in the bills, under a system of 
cricket, foot-ball, and paper-chases, from 
four to five days a week, which provided 
for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if 
any boy absented himself from these en¬ 
tertainments. He became a rumple-col- 
lared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, 




24 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

and a light half-back at Little Side foot¬ 
ball ; was pushed and prodded through 
the slack back-waters of the Lower Fourth, 
where the raffle of a school generally ac¬ 
cumulates; won his “ second-fifteen ” cap 
at foot-ball, enjoyed the dignity of a study 
with two companions in it, and began to 
look forward to office as a sub-prefect. 
At last he blossomed into full glory as 
head of the school, ex-officio captain of 
the games; head of his house, where he 
and his lieutenants preserved discipline 
and decency among seventy boys from 
twelve to seventeen; general arbiter in 
the quarrels that % spring up among the 
touchy Sixth — and intimate friend and 
ally of the Head himself. When he 
stepped forth in the black jersey, white 
knickers, and black stockings of the First 
Fifteen, the new match-ball under his 
arm, and his old and frayed cap at the 
back of his head, the small fry of the 
lower forms stood apart and worshipped. 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 25 

and the “ new caps ” of the team talked 
to him ostentatiously, that the world 
might see. And so, in summer, when 
he came back to the pavilion after a slow 
but eminently safe game, it mattered not 
whether he had made nothing or, as once 
happened, a hundred and three, the school 
shouted just the same, and women-folk 
who had come to look at the match 
looked at Cottar—Cottar, major; “ that's 
Cottar ! ” Above all, he was responsible 
for that thing called the tone of the 
school, and few realize with what passion¬ 
ate devotion a certain type of boy throws 
himself into this work. Home was a far¬ 
away country, full of ponies and fishing 
and shooting, and men-visitors who inter¬ 
fered with one's plans; but school was 
the real world, where things of vital im¬ 
portance happened, and crises arose that 
must be dealt with promptly and quietly. 
Not for nothing was it written, cc Let the 
Consuls look to it that the Republic takes 


26 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


no harm,” and Georgie was glad to be 
back in authority when the holidays ended. 
Behind him, but not too near, was the 
wise and temperate Head, now suggest¬ 
ing the wisdom of the serpent, now coun¬ 
selling the mildness of the dove; leading 
him on to see, more by half-hints than 
by any direct word, how boys and men 
are all of a piece, and how he who can 
handle the one will assuredly in time 
control the other. 

For the rest, the school was not en¬ 
couraged to dwell on its emotions, but 
rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid 
false quantities, and to enter the army 
direct, without the help of the expensive 
London crammer, under whose roof young 
blood learns too much. Cottar, major , 
went the way of hundreds before him. 
The Head gave him six months’ final 
polish, taught him what kind of answers 
best please a certain kind of examiners, 
and handed him over to the properly 



“ Cottar, major ” 









. 








































































■ 


























■ 








































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 29 

constituted authorities, who passed him 
into Sandhurst. Here he had sense 
enough to see that he was in the Lower 
Third once more, and behaved with re¬ 
spect toward his seniors, till they in turn 
respected him, and he was promoted to 
the rank of corporal, and sat in authority 
over mixed peoples with all the vices of 
men and boys combined. His reward 
was another string of athletic cups, a 
good-conduct sword, and, at last, Her 
Majesty’s commission as a subaltern in 
a first-class line regiment. He did not 
know that he bore with him from school 
and college a character worth much fine 
gold, but was pleased to find his mess so 
kindly. He had plenty of money of his 
own; his training had set the public- 
school mask upon his face, and had taught 
him how many were the “ things no fel¬ 
low can do.” By virtue of the same 
training he kept his pores open and his 
mouth shut. 


30 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

The regular working of the Empire 
shifted his world to India, where he tasted 
utter loneliness in subaltern’s quarters,— 
one room and one bullock-trunk, — and, 
with his mess, learned the new life from 
the beginning. But there were horses in 
the land — ponies at reasonable price; 
there was polo for such as could afford 
it; there were the disreputable remnants 
of a pack of hounds ; and Cottar worried 
his way along without too much despair. 
It dawned on him that a regiment in 
India was nearer the chance of active ser¬ 
vice than he had conceived, and that a 
man might as well study his profession. 
A major of the new school backed this 
idea with enthusiasm, and he and Cottar 
accumulated a library of military works, 
and read and argued and disputed far 
into the nights. But the adjutant said 
the old thing: “ Get to know your men, 
young un, and they’ll follow you any¬ 
where. That’s all you want — know 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 3 1 

your men.” Cottar thought he knew 
them fairly well at cricket and the regi¬ 
mental sports, but he never realized the 
true inwardness of them till he was sent 
off with a detachment of twenty to sit 
down in a mud fort near a rushing river 
which was spanned by a bridge of boats. 
When the floods came they went forth 
and hunted strayed pontoons along the 
banks. Otherwise there was nothing to 
do, and the men got drunk, gambled, and 
quarrelled. They were a sickly crew, for 
a junior subaltern is by custom saddled 
with the worst men. Cottar endured 
their rioting as long as he could, and 
then sent down-country for a dozen pairs 
of boxing-gloves. 

“ I would n’t blame yoiK for fightin’,” 
said he, “ if you only knew how to use 
your hands ; but you don’t. Take these 
things, and I ’ll show you.” The men 
appreciated his efforts. Now, instead of 
blaspheming and swearing at a comrade, 


32 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


and threatening to shoot him, they could 
take him apart, and soothe themselves 
to exhaustion. As one explained whom 
Cottar found with a shut eye and a 
diamond-shaped mouth spitting blood 
through an embrasure: “We tried it 
with the gloves, sir, for twenty minutes, 
and that done us no good, sir. Then we 
took off the gloves and tried it that way 
for another twenty minutes, same as you 
showed us, sir, an’ that done us a world 
o’ good. ’T was n’t fightin’ sir; there 
was a bet on.” 

Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited 
his men to other sports, such as racing 
across country in shirt and trousers after 
a trail of torn paper, and to single-stick 
in the evenings, till the native population, 
who had a lust for sport in every form, 
wished to know whether the white men 
understood wrestling. They sent in an 
ambassador, who took the soldiers by the 
neck and threw them about the dust; and 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 33 

the entire command were all for this new 
game. They spent money on learning 
new falls and holds, which was better than 
buying other doubtful commodities; and 
the peasantry grinned five deep round 
the tournaments. 

That detachment, who had gone up 
in bullock-carts, returned to headquarters 
at an average rate of thirty miles a day, 
fair heel-and-toe; no sick, no prisoners, 
and no court martials pending. They 
scattered themselves among their friends, 
singing the praises of their lieutenant and 
looking for causes of offence. 

“ How did you do it, young un ? ” the 
adjutant asked. 

“ Oh, I sweated the beef off 'em, and 
then I sweated some muscle on to 'em. 
It was rather a lark.” 

cc If that's your way of lookin' at it, we 
can give you all the larks you want. Young 
Davies isn’t feelin’ quite fit, and he's next 
for detachment duty. Care to go for him ?" 

3 


34 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

“’Sure he wouldn’t mind? I don’t 
want to shove myself forward, you 
know.” 

“ You need n’t bother on Davies’s ac¬ 
count. We’ll give you the sweepin’s of 
the corps, and you can see what you can 
make of ’em.” 

“All right,” said Cottar. “It’s better 
fun than loafin’ about cantonments.” 

“ Rummy thing,” said the adjutant, 
after Cottar had returned to his wilder¬ 
ness with twenty other devils worse than 
the first. “If Cottar only knew it, half 
the women in the station would give 
their eyes — confound ’em ! — to have the 
young un in tow.” 

“ That accounts for Mrs. Elery sayin’ 
I was workin’ my nice new boy too hard,” 
said a wing commander. 

“ Oh, yes; and ‘ Why does n’t he 
come to the band-stand in the evenings?’ 
and c Can’t I get him to make up a four 
at tennis with the Hammon girls?’” the 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 35 

adjutant snorted. “ Look at young 
Davies makin’ an ass of himself over 
mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be 
his mother! ” 

“No one can accuse young Cottar of 
runnin’ after women, white or black,” the 
major replied thoughtfully. “ But, then, 
that’s the kind that generally goes the 
worst mucker in the end.” 

“Not Cottar. I’ve only run across 
one of his muster before — a fellow called 
Ingles, in South Africa. He was just 
the same hard-trained, athletic-sports build 
of animal. Always kept himself in the 
pink of condition. Did n’t do him much 
good, though. ’Shot at Wesselstroom 
the week before Majuba. Wonder how 
the young un will lick his detachment 
into shape.” 

Cottar turned up six weeks later, on 
foot, with his pupils. He never told his 
experiences, but the men spoke enthusi¬ 
astically, and fragments of it leaked back 


36 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

to the colonel through sergeants, batmen, 
and the like. 

There was great jealousy between the 
first and second detachments, but the 
men united in adoring Cottar, and their 
way of showing it was by sparing him all 
the trouble that men know how to make 
for an unloved officer. He sought popu¬ 
larity as little as he had sought it at 
school, and therefore it came to him. 
He favored no one — not even when 
the company sloven pulled the company 
cricket-match out of the fire with an un¬ 
expected forty-three at the last moment. 
There was very little getting round him, 
for he seemed to know by instinct exactly 
when and where to head off a malingerer; 
but he did not forget that the difference 
between a dazed and sulky junior of the 
upper school and a bewildered, brow¬ 
beaten lump of a private fresh from the 
depot was very small indeed. The ser¬ 
geants, seeing these things, told him secrets 



Young Davies 






































































































































1 



















































- 







THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 39 

generally hid from young officers. His 
words were quoted as barrack authority 
on bets in canteen and at tea; and the 
veriest shrew of the corps, bursting with 
charges against other women who had 
used the cooking-ranges out of turn, for¬ 
bore to speak when Cottar, as the regula¬ 
tions ordained, asked of a morning if 
there were cc any complaints.” 

“ I’m full o’ complaints,” said Mrs. 
Corporal Morrison, “ an’ I’d kill O’Hal- 
loran’s fat sow of a wife any day, but ye 
know how it is. ’E puts ’is head just 
inside the door, an’ looks down ’is blessed 
nose so bashful, an’ ’e whispers, c Any 
complaints ? ’ Ye can’t complain after 
that. I want to kiss him. Some day 
I think I will. Heigh-ho! she’ll be 
a lucky woman that gets Young Inno¬ 
cence. See ’im now, girls. Do ye blame 
me?” 

Cottar was cantering across to polo, 
and he looked a very satisfactory figure 


40 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


of a man as he gave easily to the first 
excited bucks of his pony, and slipped 
over a low mud wall to the practice- 
ground. There were more than Mrs. 
Corporal Morrison who felt as she did. 
But Cottar was busy for eleven hours of 
the day. He did not care to have his 
tennis spoiled by petticoats in the court; 
and after one long afternoon at a garden- 
party, he explained to his major that this 
sort of thing was “ futile piffle/’ and the 
major laughed. Theirs was not a mar¬ 
ried mess, except for the colonel’s wife, 
and Cottar stood in awe of the good lady. 
She said “ my regiment,” and the world 
knows what that means. None the less, 
when they wanted her to give away the 
prizes after a shooting-match, and she 
refused because one of the prize-winners 
was married to a girl who had made a 
jest of her behind her broad back, the 
mess ordered Cottar to “ tackle her,” in 
his best calling-kit. This he did, simply 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 4 r 

and laboriously, and she gave way alto¬ 
gether. 



“ Slipped over a low mud wall to the practice-ground" 


“ She only wanted to know the facts 
of the case/' he explained. “ I just told 
her, and she saw at once.” 

“ Ye-es,” said the adjutant. “ I expect 







42 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

that 's what she did. Comm’ to the 
Fusiliers' dance to-night, Galahad ? ” 

“No, thanks. I've got a fight on 
with the major.” The virtuous appren¬ 
tice sat up till midnight in the major's 
quarters, with a stop-watch and a pair of 
compasses, shifting little painted lead- 
blocks about a four-inch map. 

Then he turned in and slept the sleep 
of innocence, which is full of healthy 
dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams 
he noticed at the beginning of his second 
hot weather. Two or three times a month 
they duplicated or ran in series. He 
would find himself sliding into dream¬ 
land by the same road — a road that ran 
along a beach near a pile of brushwood. 
To the right lay the sea, sometimes at 
full tide, sometimes withdrawn to the 
very horizon; but he knew it for the 
same sea. By that road he would travel 
over a swell of rising ground covered 
with short, withered grass, into valleys 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 43 



of wonder and unreason. 
Beyond the ridge, which 
was crowned with some 
sort of street-lamp, any¬ 
thing was possible; but 
up to the lamp it seemed 
to him that he knew the 
road as well as he knew 
the parade-ground. He 
learned to look forward 
to the place; for, once 
there, he was sure of a 
good night’s rest, and In¬ 
dian hot weather can be 
rather trying. First, shad¬ 
owy under closing eyelids, 
would come the outline of 
the brushwood-pile, next 
the white sand of the 
beach-road, almost over¬ 
hanging the black, change¬ 
ful sea; then the turn 
inland and uphill to the 





44 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


single light. When he was unrestful for 
any reason, he would tell himself how he 
was sure to get there—sure to get 
there — if he shut his eyes and 
surrendered to the drift of things. 
But one night after a foolishly 
hard hour’s polo (the thermometer 
was 94 0 in his quarters at ten 
o’clock), sleep stood away from 
him altogether, though he did his 
best to find the well-known road, 
the point where true sleep began. 
At last he saw the brushwood- 
pile, and hurried along to the 
ridge, for behind him he felt was 
the wide-awake, sultry world. He 
reached the lamp in safety, tingling 



































7 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 45 

try policeman—sprang up before him and 
touched him on the shoulder ere he could 
dive into the dim valley below. He was 
filled with terror, — the hopeless terror of 
dreams, — for the policeman 
said, in the awful, distinct 
voice of dream-people, “ I am 
Policeman Day coming back 
from the City of Sleep. You 
come with me.” Georgie knew 
it was true — that just beyond 
him in the valley lay the lights 
of the City of Sleep, where he 
would have been sheltered, and 
that this Policeman-Thing had full 
power and authority to head him 
back to miserable wakefulness. | 

He found himself looking at the 
moonlight on the wall, dripping 
with fright; and he never over¬ 
came that horror, though he met 
the Policeman several times that 
hot weather, and his coming was 














the forerunner of a 
bad night. 

But other dreams — 
perfectly absurd ones 
—filled him with an 
incommunicable de¬ 
light. All those that he remembered 
began by the brushwood-pile. For in¬ 
stance, he found a small clockwork 
steamer (he had noticed it many nights 
before) lying by the sea-road, and 
stepped into it, whereupon it moved with 
surpassing swiftness over an abso¬ 
lutely level sea. This was glorious, 
for he felt he was exploring great matters; 
and it stopped by a lily carved in stone, 
which, most naturally, floated on the 
water. Seeing the lily was labelled 
Hong-Kong,” Georgie said : “ Of 
'js. course. This is precisely what I ex¬ 
pected Hong-Kong would be like. 
How magnificent!” Thousands of 
miles farther on it halted at yet another 
stone lily, labelled “Java”; and this, 






















him hugely, because he knew that 
now he was at the world’s end. But 
the little boat ran on and on till it lay 
in a deep fresh-water lock, the sides 
of which were carven marble, green 
with moss. Lily-pads lay on the ^ 
water, and reeds arched above. Some one 
moved among the reeds — some one 
whom Georgie knew he had trav¬ 
elled to this world’s end to reach. 

Therefore everything was entirely 
well with him. He was unspeakably 
happy, and vaulted over the ship’s side to 
find this person. When his feet touched 
that still water, it changed, with the rustle 
of unrolling maps, to nothing less than a 
sixth quarter of the globe, beyond the 
most remote imagining of man — a place 
where islands were colored yellow and 
blue, their lettering strung across their 
faces. They gave on unknown seas, and 
Georgie’s urgent desire was to return 
swiftly across this floating atlas to known 


/ 


















bearings. He told himself repeatedly 
that it was no good to hurry; but 
still he hurried desperately, and the 
islands slipped and slid under his 
feet, the straits yawned and widened, 
till he found himself utterly lost in 
the world’s fourth dimension, with 
no hope of return. Yet only a little 
distance away he could see the old world 
with the rivers and mountain-chains 
marked according to the Sandhurst rules 
of map-making. Then that person for 
whom he had come to the Lily Lock 
(that was its name) ran up across unex¬ 
plored territories, and showed him a 
way. They fled hand in hand till they 
reached a road that spanned 
ravines, and ran along the 
edge of precipices, and was 
tunnelled through mountains. 

“This goes to our brushwood- 
pile,” said his companion; and 
all his trouble was at an end. 

He took a pony, because he 




















understood that this was the Thirty- 
Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly, 
and raced through the clattering tunnels 
and round the curves, always downhill, 
till he heard the sea to his left, and saw 
it raging under a full moon, against 
sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but 
he recognized the nature of the country, 
the dark-purple downs inland, and the 
bents that whistled in the wind. The 
road was eaten away in places, and the 
sea lashed at him — black, foamless 
tongues of smooth and glossy rollers; 
but he was sure that there was less danger 
from the sea than from “Them,” 
whoever “ They” were, inland to his 
right. He knew, too, that he would 
be safe if he could reach the down 














5 o THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

right, walked quietly over to the brush¬ 
wood-pile, found the little steamer had 
returned to the beach whence he had un¬ 
moored it, and — must have fallen asleep, 
for he could remember no more. “ I ’m 
gettin’ the hang of the geography of that 
place,” he said to himself, as he shaved next 
morning. <c I must have made some sort of 
circle. Let’s see. The Thirty-Mile Ride 
(now how the deuce did I know it was called 
the Thirty-Mile Ride ?) joins the sea-road 
beyond the first down where the lamp is. 
And that atlas-country lies at the back of 
the Thirty-Mile Ride, somewhere out to 
the right beyond the hills and tunnels. 
Rummy things, dreams. ’Wonder what 
makes mine fit into each other so ? ” 

He continued on his solid way through 
the recurring duties of the seasons. The 
regiment was shifted to another station, 
and he enjoyed road-marching for two 
months, with a good deal of mixed shoot¬ 
ing thrown in, and when they reached 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 51 

their new cantonments he became a mem¬ 
ber of the local Tent Club, and chased 
the mighty boar on horseback with a 
short stabbing-spear. There he met the 
mahseer of the Poonch, beside whom the 
tarpon is as a herring, and he who lands 
him can say that he is a fisherman. This 
was as new and as fascinating as the big- 
game shooting that fell to his portion, 
when he had himself photographed for 
the mother’s benefit, sitting on the flank 
of his first tiger. 

Then the adjutant was promoted, and 
Cottar rejoiced with him, for he admired 
the adjutant greatly, and marvelled who 
might be big enough to fill his place; so 
that he nearly collapsed when the mantle 
fell on his own shoulders, and the colonel 
said a few sweet things that made him 
blush. An adjutant’s position does not 
differ materially from that of head of the 
school, and Cottar stood in the same 
relation to the colonel as he had to his 


52 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

old Head in England. Only, tempers 
wear out in hot weather, and things were 
said and done that tried him sorely, and 
he made glorious blunders, from which 
the regimental sergeant-major pulled him 
with a loyal soul and a shut mouth. 
Slovens and incompetents raged against 
him; the weak-minded strove to lure 
him from the ways of justice; the small- 
minded — yea, men whom Cottar be¬ 
lieved would never do “ things no fellow 
can do ” — imputed motives mean and 
circuitous to actions that he had not spent 
a thought upon; and he tasted injustice, 
and it made him very sick. But his con¬ 
solation came on parade, when he looked 
down the full companies, and reflected 
how few were in hospital or cells, and 
wondered when the time would come to 
try the machine of his love and labor. 

But they needed and expected the 
whole of a man’s working-day, and maybe 
three or four hours of the night. Curi- 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 53 

ously enough, he never 
dreamed about the regi- JsuML{ J(|jfc 
ment as he was popularly 
supposed to. The mind, 
set free from the day’s doings, gen- Vy 
erally ceased working altogether, or, 
if it moved at all, carried him along 
the old beach-road to the downs, the . 
lamp-post, and, once in a while, to 
terrible Policeman Day. The second 
time that he returned to the world’s 
lost continent (this was a dream that 
repeated itself aga ; " onro1 '" 
variations, on the 




Key to the Gate of the 


City of Sleep. 


knew that if he only sat 
still the person from the 


Lily Lock would help him, and he was not 
disappointed. Sometimes he was trapped 
in mines of vast depth hollowed out of the 







54 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

heart of the world, where men in torment 
chanted echoing songs ; and he heard this 
person coming along through the galleries, 
and everything was made safe and delight¬ 
ful. They met again in low-roofed Indian 
railway-carriages that halted in a garden 
surrounded by gilt-and-green railings, 
where a mob of stony white people, all 
unfriendly, sat at breakfast-tables covered 
with roses, and separated Georgie from 
his companion, while underground voices 
sang deep-voiced songs. Georgie was filled 
with enormous despair till they two met 
again. They foregathered in the middle 
of an endless, hot tropic night, and crept 
into a huge house that stood, he knew, 
somewhere north of the railway-station 
where the people ate among the roses. 
It was surrounded with gardens, all moist 
and dripping; and in one room, reached 
through leagues of whitewashed passages, 
a Sick Thing lay in bed. Now the least 
noise, Georgie knew, would unchain some 





“ Back from the City of Sleep 















































































































































































































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 57 

waiting horror, and his companion knew 
it, too; but when their eyes met across 
the bed, Georgie was disgusted to see 
that she was a child—alittlegirl in strapped 
shoes, with her black hair combed back 
from her forehead. 

“ What disgraceful folly ! ” he thought. 
“ Now she could do nothing whatever if 
Its head came off.” 

Then the Thing coughed, and the ceil¬ 
ing shattered down in plaster on the 
mosquito-netting, and “They” rushed in 
from all quarters. He dragged the child 
through the stifling garden, voices chant¬ 
ing behind them, and they rode the 
Thirty-Mile Ride under whip and spur 
along the sandy beach by the booming 
sea, till they came to the downs, the 
lamp-post, and the brushwood-pile, which 
was safety. Very often dreams would 
break up about them in this fashion, and 
they would be separated, to endure awful 
adventures alone. But the most amus- 


58 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

ing times were when he and she had a 
clear understanding that it was all make- 
believe, and walked through mile-wide 
roaring rivers without even taking off 
their shoes, or set light to populous cities 
to see how they would burn, and were rude 
as any children to the vague shadows met 
in their rambles. Later in the night they 
were sure to suffer for this, either at the 
hands of the Railway People eating among 
the roses, or in the tropic uplands at the far 
end of the Thirty-Mile Ride. Together, 
this did not much affright them; but often 
Georgie would hear her shrill cry of “ Boy ! 
Boy ! ” half a world away, and hurry to 
her rescue before “ They ” maltreated her. 

He and she explored the dark-purple 
downs as far inland from the brushwood- 
pile as they dared, but that was always a 
dangerous matter. The interior was filled 
with “ Them,” and “ They ” went about 
singing in the hollows, and Georgie and 
she felt safer on or near the seaboard. 







♦ 7n*t Tkmi 
il i 1 ? 
% 7 9* 


ihwi n»m 
lo- !■>)■ 


,A' ] , 


iulsu 






















THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 61 


So thoroughly had he come to know the 
place of his dreams that even waking he 
accepted it as a real country, and made a 
rough sketch of it. He kept his own 
counsel, of course; but the permanence 
of the land puzzled him. His ordinary 
dreams were as formless and as fleeting 
as any healthy dreams could be, but once 
at the brushwood-pile he moved within 
known limits and could see where he was 
going. There were months at a time 
when nothing notable crossed his sleep. 
Then the dreams would come in a batch 
of five or six, and next morning the map 
that he kept in his writing-case would be 
written up to date, for Georgie was a 
most methodical person. There was, in¬ 
deed, a danger — his seniors said so — of 
his developing into a regular “Auntie Fuss ” 
of an adjutant, and when an officer once 
takes to old-maidism there is more hope 
for the virgin of seventy than for him. 

But fate sent the change that was needed, 


62 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


in the shape of a little winter campaign on 
the Border, which, after the manner of 
little campaigns, flashed out into a very 
ugly war; and Cottars regiment was 
chosen among the first. 

“ Now,” said a major, cc this 'll shake the 
cobwebs out of us all—especially you, Gala- 
had ; and we can see what your hen-with-one- 
chick attitude has done for the regiment.” 

Cottar nearly wept with joy as the cam¬ 
paign went forward. They were fit — 
physically fit beyond the other troops; 
they were good children in camp, wet or 
dry, fed or unfed; and they followed their 
officers with the quick suppleness and 
trained obedience of a first-class foot-ball 
fifteen. They were cut off from their 
apology for a base, and cheerfully cut 
their way back to it again; they crowned 
and cleaned out hills full of the enemy 
with the precision of well-broken dogs of 
chase; and in the hour of retreat, when, 
hampered with the sick and wounded of 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 63 

the column, they were persecuted down 
eleven miles of waterless valley, they, 
serving as rear-guard, covered themselves 
with a great glory in the eyes of fellow- 
professionals. Any regiment can advance, 
but few know how to retreat with a sting 
in the tail. Then they turned to made 
roads, most often under fire, and dis¬ 
mantled some inconvenient mud redoubts. 
They were the last corps to be withdrawn 
when the rubbish of the campaign was all 
swept up ; and after a month in standing 
camp, which tries morals severely, they 
departed to their own place in column 
of fours, singing: 

u ’E ’s goin’ to do without ’em — 

Don’t want ’em any more; 

’E’s goin’ to do without ’em, 

As ’e’s often done before. 

’E’s goin’ to be a martyr 
On a ’ighly novel plan, 

An’ all the boys and girls will say, 
c Ow ! what a nice young man— man — man ! 
Ow ! what a nice young man ! ’ ” 


64 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

There came out a “ Gazette ” in which 
Cottar found that he had been behaving 
with “ courage and coolness and discre¬ 
tion ” in all his capacities; that he had as¬ 
sisted the wounded under fire, and blown 
in a gate, also under fire. Net result, his 
captaincy and a brevet majority, coupled 
with the Distinguished Service Order. 

As to his wounded, he explained that 
they were both heavy men, whom he 
could lift more easily than any one else. 
“ Otherwise, of course, I should have 
sent out one of my men; and, of course, 
about that gate business, we were safe the 
minute we were well under the walls.” 
But this did not prevent his men from 
cheering him furiously whenever they saw 
him, or the mess from giving him a din¬ 
ner on the eve of his departure to Eng¬ 
land. (A year’s leave was among the 
things he had “ snaffled out of the cam¬ 
paign,” to use his own words.) The 
doctor, who had taken quite as much as 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 65 

was good for him, quoted poetry about 
“ a good blade carving the casques of 
men/’ and so on, and everybody told 
Cottar that he was an excellent person; 
but when he rose to make his maiden 
speech they shouted so that he was un¬ 
derstood to say, “ It is n’t any use tryin’ 
to speak with you chaps rottin’ me like 
this. Let’s have some pool.” 



It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and- 
twenty days in an easy-going steamer on 
warm waters, in the company of a woman 
who lets you see that you are head and 
shoulders superior to the rest of the 
world, even though that woman may 
be, and most often is, ten counted years 





66 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


your senior. P. O. boats are not lighted 
with the disgustful particularity of Atlan¬ 
tic liners. There is more phosphores¬ 
cence at the bows, and greater silence 
and darkness bv the hand-steering gear 
aft. 

Awful things might have happened to 
Georgie but for the little fact that he had 
never studied the first principles of the 
game he was expected to play. So when 
Mrs. Zuleika, at Aden, told him how 
motherly an interest she felt in his wel¬ 
fare, medals, brevet, and all, Georgie took 
her at the foot of the letter, and promptly 
talked of his own mother, three hundred 
miles nearer each day, of his home, and 
so forth, all the way up the Red Sea. 
It was much easier than he had supposed 
to converse with a woman for an hour at a 
time. Then Mrs. Zuleika, turning from 
parental affection, spoke of love in the 
abstract as a thing not unworthy of study, 
and in discreet twilights after dinner de- 



Somewhere in the Mediterranean ” 















































4 




4 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 69 


manded confidences. Georgie would have 
been delighted to supply them, but he 
had none, and did not know it was his 
duty to manufacture them. Mrs. Zu- 
leika expressed surprise and unbelief, and 
asked those questions which deep asks of 
deep. She learned all that was necessary 
to conviction, and, being very much a 
woman, resumed (Georgie never knew 
that she had abandoned) the motherly 
attitude. 

“ Do you know,” she said, somewhere 
in the Mediterranean, “ I think you 're 
the very dearest boy I have ever met in 
my life, and I 'd like you to remember 
me a little. You will when you are older, 
but I want you to remember me now. 
You'll make some girl very happy.” 

“ Oh ! Hope so,” said Georgie, gravely; 
“but there's heaps of time for marryin' 
an' all that sort of thing, ain’t there ? ” 

“ That depends. Here are your bean- 
bags for the Ladies' Competition. I think 


70 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

I ’m growing too old to care for these 
tamashas .” 

They were getting up sports, and Georgie 
was on the committee. He never noticed 
how perfectly the bags were sewn, but 
another woman did, and smiled — once. 
He liked Mrs. Zuleika greatly. She was 
a bit old, of course, but uncommonly nice. 
There was no nonsense about her. 

A few nights after they passed Gibral¬ 
tar his dream returned to him. She who 
waited by the brushwood-pile was no 
longer a little girl, but a woman with 
black hair that grew into a “ widow’s 
peak,” combed back from her forehead. 
He knew her for the child in black, the 
companion of the last six years, and, as 
it had been in the time of the meetings 
on the Lost Continent, he was filled with 
delight unspeakable. “ They,” for some 
dreamland reason, were friendly or had 
gone away that night, and the two flitted 
together over all their country, from the 





she said, " 














































































































































































































\ 















































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 73 

brushwood-pile up the Thirty-Mile Ride, 
till they saw the House of the Sick Thing, 
a pin-point in the distance to the left; 
stamped through the Railway Waiting- 
room where the roses lay on the spread 
breakfast-tables; and returned, by the 
ford and the city they had once burned 
for sport, to the great swells of the downs 
under the lamp-post. Wherever they 
moved a strong singing followed them 
underground, but this night there was no 
panic. All the land was empty except 
for themselves, and at the last (they were 
sitting by the lamp-post hand in hand) 
she turned and kissed him. He woke 
with a start, staring at the waving curtain 
of the cabin door ; he could almost have 
sworn that the kiss was real. 

Next morning the ship was rolling in 
a Biscay sea, and people were not happy; 
but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, 
tubbed, and smelling of soap, several 
turned to look at him because of the 


74 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

light in his eyes and the splendor of 
his countenance. 

Well, you look beastly fit,” snapped 
a neighbor. “ Any one left you a legacy 
in the middle of the Bay ? ” 

Georgie reached for the curry, with a 
seraphic grin. “ I suppose it’s the get- 
tin* so near home, and all that. I do feel 
rather festive this mornin*. 'Rolls a bit, 
doesn’t she?” 

Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till 
the end of the voyage, when she left with¬ 
out bidding him farewell, and wept pas¬ 
sionately on the dock-head for pure joy 
of meeting her children, who, she had 
often said, were so like their father. 

Georgie headed for his own country, 
wild with delight of his first long fur¬ 
lough after the lean seasons. Nothing 
was changed in that orderly life, from the 
coachman who met him at the station 
to the white peacock that stormed at the 
carriage from the stone wall above the 



“ ‘ Rolls a bit , 


doesn't she? ’ ” 


























. 













































































































































THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 77 

shaven lawns. The house took toll of 
him with due regard to precedence—first 
the mother; then the father; then the 
housekeeper, who wept and praised God ; 
then the butler, and so on down to the 
under-keeper, who had been dog-boy in 
Georgie’s youth, and called him cc Master 
Georgie,” and was reproved by the groom 
who had taught Georgie to ride. 

“ Not a thing changed,” he sighed con¬ 
tentedly, when the three of them sat down 
to dinner in the late sunlight, while the 
rabbits crept out upon the lawn below the 
cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by 
the home paddock rose for their evening 
meal. 

“ Our changes are all over, dear,” cooed 
the mother; “ and now I am getting used 
to your size and your tan (you ’re very 
brown, Georgie), I see you have n’t 
changed in the least. You ’re exactly 
like the pater.” 

The father beamed on this man after 


78 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

his own heart, — “ youngest major in the 
army, and should have had the V. C., 
sir/’ — and the butler listened with his 
professional mask off when Master Georgie 
spoke of war as it is waged to-day, and 
his father cross-questioned. 

They went out on the terrace to smoke 
among the roses, and the shadow of the 
old house lay long across the wonderful 
English foliage, which is the only living 
green in the world. 

“Perfect! By Jove, it’s perfect!” 
Georgie was looking at the round-bosomed 
woods beyond the home paddock, where 
the white pheasant boxes were ranged; 
and the golden air was full of a hundred 
sacred scents and sounds. Georgie felt 
his father’s arm tighten in his. 

“It’s not half bad — but hodie mihi , 
eras tibi , isn’t it? I suppose you’ll 
be turning up some fine day with a girl 
under your arm, if you haven’t one 
now, eh ? ” 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 79 

“You can make your mind easy, sir. 
I have n’t one.” 

“Not in all these years?” said the 
mother. 

“I hadn’t time, mummy. They keep 
a man pretty busy, these days, in the ser¬ 
vice, and most of our mess are unmarried, 
too.” 

“ But you must have met hundreds in 
society — at balls, and so on?” 

“ I’m like the Tenth, mummy: I don’t 
dance.” 

“ Don’t dance ! What have you been 
doing with yourself, then—backing other 
men’s bills ? ” said the father. 

“ Oh, yes; I’ve done a little of that 
too; but you see, as things are now, a 
man has all his work cut out for him to 
keep abreast of his profession, and my 
days were always too full to let me lark 
about half the night.” 

“ Hmm ! ” — suspiciously. 

“It’s never too late to learn. We 


8 o THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


ought to give some kind of housewarm¬ 
ing for the people about, now you Ve 
come back. Unless you want to go 
straight up to town, dear ? ” 

“No. I don't want anything better 
than this. Let's sit still and enjoy our¬ 
selves. I suppose there will be some¬ 
thing for me to ride if I look for it ? ” 
“ Seeing I Ve been kept down to the 
old brown pair for the last six weeks be¬ 
cause all the others were being got ready 
for Master Georgie, I should say there 
might be,” the father chuckled. “They're 
reminding me in a hundred ways that I 
must take the second place now.” 

“ Brutes ! ” 

“ The pater does n’t mean it, dear; 
but every one has been trying to make 
your home-coming a success; and you do 
like it, don't you ? ” 

“ Perfect! Perfect! There's no place 
like England — when you've done your 
work.” 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 81 


cc That’s the proper way to look at it, 
my son.” 

And so up and down the flagged walk 
till their shadows grew long in the moon¬ 
light, and the mother went indoors and 
played such songs as a small boy once 
clamored for, and the squat silver can¬ 
dlesticks were brought in, and Georgie 
climbed to the two rooms in the west 
wing that had been his nursery and his 
play-room in the beginning. Then who 
should come to tuck him up for the 
night but the mother? And she sat 
down on the bed, and they talked for a 
long hour, as mother and son should, if 
there is to be any future for the Empire. 
With a simple woman’s deep guile she 
asked questions and suggested answers 
that should have waked some sign in the 
face on the pillow, and there was neither 
quiver of eyelid nor quickening of breath, 
neither evasion nor delay in reply. So 
she blessed him and kissed him on the 


82 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


mouth, which is not always a mother’s 
property, and said something to her hus¬ 
band later, at which he laughed profane 
and incredulous laughs. 

All the establishment waited on Georgie 
next morning, from the tallest six-year- 
old, “with a mouth like a kid glove. 
Master Georgie,” to the under-keeper 
strolling carelessly along the horizon, 
Georgie’s pet rod in his hand, and 
“ There’s a four-pounder risin’ below 
the lasher. You don’t ’ave ’em in Injia, 
Mast—Major Georgie.” It was all 
beautiful beyond telling, even though the 
mother insisted on taking him out in the 
landau (the leather had the hot Sunday 
smell of his youth) and showing him off 
to her friends at all the houses for six 
miles round; and the pater bore him up 
to town and a lunch at the club, where 
he introduced him, quite carelessly, to 
not less than thirty ancient warriors whose 
sons were not the youngest majors in the 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 83 

army and had not the D. S. O. After 
that it was Georgie’s turn; and remem¬ 
bering his friends, he filled up the house 
with that kind of officer who live in cheap 
lodgings at Southsea or Montpelier Square, 
Brompton — good men all, but not well 
off. The mother perceived that they 
needed girls to play with; and as there 
was no scarcity of girls, the house hummed 
like a dovecote in spring. They tore up 
the place for amateur theatricals; they 
disappeared in the gardens when they 
ought to have been rehearsing; they swept 
off every available horse and vehicle, 
especially the governess-cart and the fat 
pony; they fell into the trout-ponds; 
they picnicked and they tennised; and 
they sat on gates in the twilight, two by 
two, and Georgie found that he was not 
in the least necessary to their entertain¬ 
ment. 

“ My word ! ” said he, when he saw 
the last of their dear backs. cc They told 


84 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

me they’ve enjoyed ’emselves, but they 
have n’t done half the things they said 
they would.” 

“ I know they’ve enjoyed themselves 
— immensely,” said the mother. “You’re 
a public benefactor, dear.” 

“ Now we can be quiet again, can’t 
we ? ” 

“ Oh, quite. I’ve a very dear friend 
of mine that I want you to know. She 
could n’t come with the house so full, 
because she’s an invalid, and she was 
away when you first came. She’s a Mrs. 
Lacy.” 

“ Lacy ! I don’t remember the name 
about here.” 

“No; they came after you went to 
India — from Oxford. Her husband died 
there, and she lost some money, I believe. 
They bought The Firs on the Bassett 
Road. She’s a very sweet woman, and 
we’re very fond of them both.” 

“ She’s a widow, did n’t you say ? ” 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 85 

<c She has a daughter. Surely I said so, 
dear ? ” 

<c Does she fall into trout-ponds, and 
gas and giggle, and ‘ Oh, Major Cottah! * 
and all that sort of thing ? ” 

“ No, indeed. She ’s a very quiet girl, 
and very musical. She always came over 
here with her music-books—composing, 
you know; and she generally works all 
day, so you won’t — ” 

“’Talking about Miriam?” said the 
pater, coming up. The mother edged 
toward him within elbow-reach. There 
was no finesse about Georgie’s father. 
“ Oh, Miriam’s a dear girl. Plays beau¬ 
tifully. Rides beautifully, too. She’s a 
regular pet of the household. Used to 
call me—” The elbow went home, and 
ignorant but obedient always, the pater 
shut himself off. 

“ What used she to call you, sir ? ” 

“ All sorts of pet names. I’m very 
fond of Miriam.” 


86 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


“ Sounds Jewish— Miriam.” 

“Jew! You’ll be calling yourself a 
Jew next. She’s one of the Hereford¬ 
shire Lacys. When her aunt dies —” 
Again the elbow. 

“ Oh, you won’t see anything of her, 
Georgie. She’s busy with her music or 
her mother all day. Besides, you ’re go¬ 
ing up to town to-morrow, are n’t you ? 
I thought you said something about an 
Institute meeting?” The mother spoke. 

“ Go up to town now! What non¬ 
sense ! ” Once more the pater was shut 
off. 

“ I had some idea of it, but I’m not 
quite sure,” said the son of the house. 
Why did the mother try to get him away 
because a musical girl and her invalid 
parent were expected? He did not ap¬ 
prove of unknown females calling his 
father pet names. He would observe 
these pushing persons who had been only 
seven years in the county. 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 87 

All of which the delighted mother read 
in his countenance, herself keeping an air 
of sweet disinterestedness. 

cc They ’ll be here this evening for dinner. 
I ’m sending the carriage over for them, 
and they won’t stay more than a week.” 

“ Perhaps I shall go up to town. I 
don’t quite know yet.” Georgie moved 
away irresolutely. There was a lecture 
at the United Services Institute on the 
supply of ammunition in the field, and 
the one man whose theories most irritated 
Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated 
discussion was sure to follow, and per¬ 
haps he might find himself moved to 
speak. He took his rod that afternoon 
and went down to thrash it out among 
the trout. 

“ Good sport, dear ! ” said the mother, 
from the terrace. 

“’Fraid it won’t be, mummy. All 
those men from town, and the girls par¬ 
ticularly, have put every trout off his 


88 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

feed for weeks. There is n't one of ’em 
that cares for fishin’ — really. Fancy 
stampin’ and shoutin’ on the bank, and 
tellin’ every fish for half a mile exactly 
what you ’re goin’ to do, and then chuckin’ 
a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it 
would scare me if I was a^trout!” 

But things were not as bad as he had 
expected. The black gnat was on the 
water, and the water was strictly pre¬ 
served. A three-quarter-pounder at the 
second cast set him for the campaign, and 
he worked down-stream, crouching behind 
the reed and meadow-sweet; creeping be¬ 
tween a hornbeam hedge and a foot-wide 
strip of bank, where he could see the 
trout, but where they could not distin¬ 
guish him from the background; lying 
almost on his stomach to switch the blue- 
upright sidewise through the checkered 
shadows of a gravelly ripple under over¬ 
arching trees. But he had known every 
inch of the water since he was four feet 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 89 



high. The aged 
and astute between 
sunk roots, with 
the large and fat 
that lay in the 
frothy scum below 
some strong rush 
of water, sucking 
as lazily as carp, 
came to trouble in 


‘ ‘ The hand that imitated so 
delicately the flicker and wim¬ 
ple of an egg-dropping fly . ’ ’ 

















90 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


their turn, at the hand that imitated so 
delicately the flicker and wimple of an 
egg-dropping fly. Consequently, Georgie 
found himself five miles from home when 
he ought to have been dressing for 
dinner. The housekeeper had taken 
good care that her boy should not go 
empty, and before he changed to the 
white moth he sat down to excellent 
claret with sandwiches of potted egg and 
things that adoring women make and 
men never notice. Then back, to sur¬ 
prise the otter grubbing for fresh-water 
mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the 
beechwoods foraging in the clover, and 
the policeman-like white owl stooping to 
the little field-mice, till the moon was 
strong, and he took his rod apart, and 
went home through well-remembered 
gaps in the hedges. He fetched a com¬ 
pass round the house, for, though he 
might have broken every law of the 
establishment every hour, the law of his 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 91 

boyhood was unbreakable: after fishing 
you went in by the south garden back¬ 
door, cleaned up in the outer scullery, 
and did not present yourself to your 
elders and your betters till you had 
washed and changed. 

“ Half-past ten, by Jove ! Well, we 'll 
make the sport an excuse. They would n’t 
want to see me the first evening, at any 
rate. Gone to bed, probably.” He 
skirted by the open French windows of 
the drawing-room. “ No, they haven’t. 
They look very comfy in there.” 

He could see his father in his own par¬ 
ticular chair, the mother in hers, and the 
back of a girl at the piano by the big 
potpourri-jar. The gardens looked half 
divine in the moonlight, and he turned 
down through the roses to finish his 
pipe. 

A prelude ended, and there floated out 
a voice of the kind that in his childhood 
he used to call “creamy” — a full, true 


92 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

contralto; and this is the song that he 
heard, every syllable of it: 

Over the edge of the purple down, 
Where the single lamplight gleams, 
Know ye the road to the Merciful Town 
That is hard by the Sea of Dreams — 
Where the poor may lay their wrongs 
away, 

And the sick may forget to weep ? 

But we — pity us ! oh, pity us ! 

We wakeful; ah, pity us! — 

We must go back with Policeman Day — 
Back from the City of Sleep! 




Weary they turn from the scroll and 
crown, 

Fetter and prayer and plough — 

They that go up to the Merciful Town, 
For her gates are closing now. 

It is their right in the Baths of Night 
Body and soul to steep: 

But we — pity us ! ah, pity us! 

We wakeful; oh, pity us ! — 

We must go back with Policeman Day — 
Back from the City of Sleep ! 







THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 93 



Over the edge of the purple down, 

Ere the tender dreams begin, 

Look—we may look — at the Merciful 
Town, 

But we may not enter in ! 

Outcasts all, from her guarded wall 
Back to our watch we creep: 

We — pity us ! ah, pity us ! 

We wakeful; oh, pity us ! — 

We that go back with Policeman Day — 
Back from the City of Sleep ! 


At the last echo he was aware that his 
mouth was dry and unknown pulses were 
beating in the roof of it. The house¬ 
keeper, who would have it that he must 
have fallen in and caught a chill, was 
waiting to catch him on the stairs, and, 
since he neither saw nor answered her, 
carried a wild tale abroad that brought 
his mother knocking at the door. 

“ Anything happened, dear ? Harper 
said she thought you were n’t — ” 

“No; it’s nothing. I’m all right, 
mummy. Please don’t bother.” 




94 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

He did not recognize his own voice, 
but that was a small matter beside what 
he was considering. Obviously, most 
obviously, the whole coincidence was 
crazy lunacy. He proved it to the sat¬ 
isfaction of Major George Cottar, who 
was going up to town to-morrow to hear 
a lecture on the supply of ammunition in 
the field; and having so proved it, the 
soul and brain and heart and body of 
Georgie cried joyously: “That’s the 
Lily Lock girl — the Lost Continent girl 
— the Thirty-Mile Ride girl — the Brush¬ 
wood girl! I know her ! ” 

He waked, stiff and cramped in his 
chair, to reconsider the situation by sun¬ 
light, when it did not appear normal. 
But a man must eat, and he went to 
breakfast, his heart between his teeth, 
holding himself severely in hand. 

“ Late, as usual,” said the mother. 
“’My boy, Miss Lacy.” 

A tall girl in black raised her eyes to 





The Girl 
















THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 97 

his, and Georgie’s life training deserted 
him —just as soon as he realized that she 
did not know. He stared coolly and 
critically. There was the abundant black 
hair, growing in a widow’s peak, turned 
back from the forehead, with that pecu¬ 
liar ripple over the right ear; there were 
the gray eyes set a little close together; 
the short upper lip, resolute chin, and the 
known poise of the head. There was also 
the small well-cut mouth that had kissed 
him. 

“ Georgie — dear!” said the mother, 
amazedly, for Miriam was flushing under 
the stare. 

“ I — I beg your pardon ! ” he gulped. 
<c I don’t know whether the mother has 
told you, but I’m rather an idiot at times, 
specially before I’ve had my breakfast. 
It’s — it’s a family failing.” 

He turned to explore among the hot- 
water dishes on the sideboard, rejoicing that 
she did not know — she did not know. 


7 


98 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

His conversation for the rest of the 
meal was mildly insane, though the mother 
thought she had never seen her boy look 
half so handsome. How could any girl, 
least of all one of Miriam’s discernment, 
forbear to fall down and worship ? But 
deeply Miriam was displeased. She had 
never been stared at in that fashion be¬ 
fore, and promptly retired into her shell 
when Georgie announced that he had 
changed his mind about going to town, 
and would stay to play with Miss Lacy 
if she had nothing better to do. 

“ Oh, but don’t let me throw you out. 
I’m at work. I’ve things to do all the 
morning.” 

“What possessed Georgie to behave 
so oddly? ” the mother sighed to herself. 
“ Miriam’s a bundle of feelings — like 
her mother.” 

“You compose — don’t you? Must 
be a fine thing to be able to do that. 
[“ Pig — oh, pig ! ” thought Miriam.] 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 99 


I think I heard you singin’ when I came 
in last night after fishin.’ All about a 
Sea of Dreams, was n’t it ? [Miriam shud¬ 
dered to the core of the soul that afflicted 
her.] Awfully pretty song. How d’ you 
think of such things ? ” 

“ You only composed the music, dear, 
did n't you ? ” 

“The words too. I’m sure of it,” 
said Georgie, with a sparkling eye. No ; 
she did not know. 

“ Yeth; I wrote the words too.” Mi¬ 
riam spoke slowly, for she knew she lisped 
when she was nervous. 

“Now how could you tell, Georgie?” 
said the mother, as delighted as though 
the youngest major in the army were 
ten years old, showing off before com¬ 
pany. 

“ I was sure of it, somehow. Oh, 
there are heaps of things about me, 
mummy, that you don’t understand. 
Looks as if it were goin’ to be a hot 


L. of C. 


100 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


day — for England. Would you care for 
a ride this afternoon. Miss Lacy? We 
can start out after tea, if you ’d like it.” 

Miriam could not in decency refuse, 
but any woman might see she was not 
filled with delight. 

“ That will be very nice, if you take 
the Bassett Road. It will save me send¬ 
ing Martin down to the village,” said the 
mother, filling in gaps. 

Like all good managers, the mother 
had her one weakness — a mania for little 
strategies that should economize horses 
and vehicles. Her men-folk complained 
that she turned them into common car¬ 
riers, and there was a legend in the family 
that she had once said to the pater on the 
morning of a meet: “ If you should kill 
near Bassett, dear, and if it is n’t too late, 
would you mind just popping over and 
matching me this ? ” 

“ I knew that was coming. You ’d 
never miss a chance, mother. If it’s a 





THE BRUSHWOOD BOY ioi 


fish or a trunk I won't.” Georgie 
laughed. 

“It's only a duck. They can do it 
up very neatly at Mallett’s,” said the 
mother, simply. “ You won’t mind, will 
you? We’ll have a scratch dinner at 
nine, because it’s so hot.” 

The long summer day dragged itself 
out for centuries; but at last there was 
tea on the lawn, and Miriam appeared. 

She was in the saddle before he could 
offer to help, with the clean spring of 
the child who mounted the pony for the 
Thirty-Mile Ride. The day held merci¬ 
lessly, though Georgie got down thrice 
to look for imaginary stones in Rufus’s 
foot. One cannot say even simple things 
in broad light, and this that Georgie 
meditated was not simple. So he spoke 
seldom, and Miriam was divided between 
relief and scorn. It annoyed her that 
the great hulking thing should know she 
had written the words of the song over- 


102 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


night; for though a maiden may sing her 
most secret fancies aloud, she does not 
care to have them trampled over by the 
male Philistine. They rode into the little 
red-brick street of Bassett, and Georgie 
made untold fuss over the disposition of 
that duck. It must go in just such a 
package, and be fastened to the saddle in 
just such a manner, though eight o'clock 
had struck and they were miles from dinner. 

“We must be quick!" said Miriam, 
bored and angry. 

“ There ’s no great hurry ; but we can 
cut over Dowhead Down, and let ’em out 
on the grass. That will save us half an 
hour." 

The horses capered on the short, sweet¬ 
smelling turf, and the delaying shadows 
gathered in the valley as they cantered 
over the great dun down that overhangs 
Bassett and the Western coaching-road. 
Insensibly the pace quickened without 
thought of mole-hills; Rufus, gentleman 



(t < ]f it's a fish or a trunk I can't,' George laughed 


















THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 105 

that he was, waiting on Miriam’s Dandy 
till they should have cleared the rise. 
Then down the two-mile slope they raced 
together, the wind whistling in their ears, 
to the steady throb of eight hoofs and the 
light click-click of the shifting bits. 

“ Oh, that was glorious !” Miriam cried, 
reining in. “ Dandy and I are old friends, 
but I don’t think we’ve ever gone better 
together.” 

“No; but you’ve gone quicker, once 
or twice.” 

“ Really ? When ? ” 

Georgie moistened his lips. “ Don’t 
you remember the Thirty-Mile Ride — 
with me,— when ‘They’ were after us — 
on the beach-road, with the sea to the 
left — going toward the lamp-post on 
the downs ? ” 

The girl gasped. “ What—what do 
you mean ? ” she said hysterically. 

“The Thirty-Mile Ride, and — and 
all the rest of it.” 


to6 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


“You mean — ? I didn’t sing any¬ 
thing about the Thirty-Mile Ride. I 
know I did n’t. I have never told a 
living soul.” 

“ You told about Policeman Day, and 
the lamp at the top of the downs, and 
the City of Sleep. It all joins on, you 
know — it’s the same country — and it 
was easy enough to see where you had 
been.” 

“ Good God! — It joins on—of course 
it does ; but — I have been — you have 
been— Oh, let’s walk, please, or I shall 
fall off!” 

Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a 
hand that shook below her bridle-hand, 
pulling Dandy into a walk. Miriam was 
sobbing as he had seen a man sob under 
the touch of the bullet. 

“It’s all right — it’s all right,” he 
whispered feebly. “ Only — only it ’s 
true, you know.” 

“True ! Am I mad? ” 



Down the two-mile slope they raced together 













THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 109 

<c Not unless I’m mad as well. Do try 
to think a minute quietly. How could 
any one conceivably know anything about 
the Thirty-Mile Ride having anything 
to do with you, unless he had been there ? ” 

“ But where ? But where? Tell me!” 

“ There—wherever it may be — in our 
country, I suppose. Do you remember 
the first time you rode it — the Thirty- 
Mile Ride, I mean ? You must.” 

“It was all dreams — all dreams ! ” 

cc Yes, but tell, please ; because I know.” 

“ Let me think. I — we were on 
no account to make any noise—on no 
account to make any noise.” She was 
staring between Dandy’s ears, with eyes 
that did not see, and a suffocating heart. 

“ Because c It’ was dying in the big 
house ? ” Georgie went on, reining in 
again. 

£C There was a garden with green-and- 
gilt railings — all hot. Do you remember?” 

“ I ought to. I was sitting on the 


IIO THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


other side of the bed before c It ’ coughed 
and c They * came in.” 

“You!” — the deep voice was un¬ 
naturally full and strong, and the girl’s 
wide-opened eyes burned in the dusk as 
she stared him through and through. 
“Then you’re the Boy — my Brushwood 
Boy, and I Ve known you all my life! ” 

She fell forward on Dandy’s neck. 
Georgie forced himself out of the weak¬ 
ness that was overmastering his limbs, 
and slid an arm round her waist. The 
head dropped on his shoulder, and he 
found himself with parched lips saying 
things that up till then he believed existed 
only in printed works of fiction. Merci¬ 
fully the horses were quiet. She made 
no attempt to draw herself away when 
she recovered, but lay still, whispering, 
“ Of course you ’re the Boy, and I did n’t 
know — I did n’t know.” 

“ I knew last night; and when I saw 
you at breakfast — ” 





THE BRUSHWOOD BOY in 


“ Oh, that was why! I wondered at 
the time. You would, of course.” 

“ I could n’t speak before this. Keep 
your head where it is, dear. It’s all right 
now—all right now, isn’t it? ” 

“ But how was it I did n’t know—after 
all these years and years ? I remember 
— oh, what lots of things I remember ! ” 
“Tell me some. I’ll look after the 
horses.” 

“ I remember waiting for you when the 
steamer came in. Do you ? ” 

“ At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong- 
Kong and Java?” 

“ Do you call it that, too ? ” 

“You told me it was when I was lost 
in the continent. That was you that 
showed me the way through the moun¬ 
tains ? ” 

“When the islands slid? It must 
have been, because you ’re the only one I 
remember. All the others were c Them.’ ” 
“ Awful brutes they were, too.” 


11 2 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


<c I remember showing you the Thirty- 
Mile Ride the first time. You ride just 
as you used to — then. You are you ! ” 

“ That’s odd. I thought that of you 
this afternoon. Is n’t it wonderful ? ” 

“ What does it all mean ? Why should 
you and I of the millions of people in 
the world have this — this thing between 
us ? What does it mean ? I ’m fright¬ 
ened.” 

“ This ! ” said Georgie. The horses 
quickened their pace. They thought 
they had heard an order. “ Perhaps 
when we die we may find out more, but 
it means this now.” 

There was no answer. What could 
she say ? As the world went, they had 
known each other rather less than eight 
and a half hours, but the matter was one 
that did not concern the world. There 
was a very long silence, while the breath 
in their nostrils drew cold and sharp as 
it might have been a fume of ether. 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 113 

cc That’s the second,” Georgie whis¬ 
pered. “You remember, don’t you?” 

“It’s not!” — furiously. “It’s not!” 

“ On the downs the other night— 
months ago. You were just as you are 
now, and we went over the country for 
miles and miles.” 

“It was all empty, too. They had 
gone away. Nobody frightened us. I 
wonder why. Boy ? ” 

“ Oh, if you remember that , you must 
remember the rest. Confess ! ” 

“ I remember lots of things, but I know 
I didn’t. I never have — till just now.” 

“You did, dear.” 

“I know I didn’t, because — oh, it’s 
no use keeping anything back ! — because 
I truthfully meant to.” 

“ And truthfully did.” 

“No; meant to; but some one else 
came by.” 

“There wasn’t any one else. There 
never has been.” 


8 


114 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 

“ There was — there always is. It was 
another woman — out there on the sea. 
I saw her. It was the 26th of May. 
I ’ve got it written down somewhere.” 

“ Oh, you Ve kept a record of your 
dreams, too ? That’s odd about the 
other woman, because I happened to be 
on the sea just then.” 

“ I was right. How do I know what 
you’ve done when you were awake — and 
I thought it was only you ! ” 

“ You never were more wrong in your 
life. What a little temper you Ve got! 
Listen to me a minute, dear.” And 
Georgie, though he knew it not, com¬ 
mitted black perjury. “ It—it isn’t the 
kind of thing one says to any one, be¬ 
cause they’d laugh; but on my word and 
honor, darling, I’ve never been kissed 
by a living soul outside my own people 
in all my life. Don’t laugh, dear. I 
would n’t tell any one but you, but it’s 
the solemn truth.” 


THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 115 

“ I knew ! You are you. Oh, I knew 
you ’d come some day; but I did n't 
know you were you in the least till you 
spoke.” 

cc Then give me another.” 

<c And you never cared or looked any¬ 
where ? Why, all the round world must 
have loved you from the very minute 
they saw you, Boy.” 

“They kept it to themselves if they 
did. No; I never cared.” 

“ And we shall be late for dinner — hor¬ 
ribly late. Oh, how can I look at you in 
the light before your mother — and mine! ” 
“We ’ll play you ’re Miss Lacy till the 
proper time comes. What’s the shortest 
limit for people to get engaged ? S’pose 
we have got to go through all the fuss of 
an engagement, have n’t we ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t want to talk about that. 
It’s so commonplace. I’ve thought of 
something that you don’t know. I’m 
sure of it. What’s my name ? ” 




ii6 THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 


“ Miri — no, it is n’t, by Jove ! Wait 
half a second, and it ’ll come back to me. 
You aren’t — you can’t? Why, those 
old tales — before I went to school! I’ve 
never thought of ’em from that day to 
this. Are you the original, only Annie- 
^tflouise ? ” 

“It was what you always called me 
ever since the beginning. Oh! We’ve 
turned into the avenue, and we must be 
an hour late.” 

“ What does it matter ? The chain 
goes as far back as those days ? It must, 
of course—of course it must. I’ve got 
to ride round with this pestilent old bird 
— confound him!” 

“ c “ Ha ! ha ! ” said the duck, laugh¬ 
ing ’ — do you remember that ? ” 

“Yes, I do — flower-pots on my feet, 
and all. We’ve been together all this 
while; and I’ve got to say good-bye to 
you till dinner. Sure I ’ll see you at 
dinner-time? Sure you won’t sneak up 





“ ( Good-bye y Boy' 










































. 

. 



















THE BRUSHWOOD BOY 119 



to your room, darling, and leave 
me all the evening? Good-bye, dear, 
good-bye. ,, 

cc Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind 
the arch ! Don't let Rufus bolt into 
his stables. Good-bye. Yes, I ’ll 
come down to dinner; but — what 
shall I do when I see you in the 
light! ” 






















. 






































































I 











































































